Your power bill is high, some rooms never feel right, and the system runs all day. Often the answer isn't a bigger AC — it's the air you paid for leaking out of the ducts. Here's the building-science truth.
Updated June 2026 • Written by the team at Anderson Heating, Air & Insulation, serving Calhoun since 1978 🐾
Your ducts carry the air you paid to heat and cool. When they leak — usually at joints and connections in the attic or crawlspace — that conditioned air escapes into spaces you don't live in, and hot or dusty unconditioned air gets pulled in to replace it. So the system runs longer, the power bill climbs, rooms stay uncomfortable, and the equipment wears out faster. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates a typical home loses about 20–30% of the air moving through its ducts to leaks. The fix isn't a bigger AC — it's measuring the leakage with a duct blaster and sealing what matters.
Most homeowners think about the box outside and the thermostat inside, and never about the ductwork in between. But the ducts are how the air actually gets to your rooms — and they're full of joints, seams, boots, and connections that can leak. When ducts run through an unconditioned attic or crawlspace (as most do in this area), every leak in the supply side pushes air you paid to condition into a space you never occupy, and every leak on the return side pulls hot attic or musty crawlspace air into the system. You end up paying to cool your attic and breathe your crawlspace.
The U.S. Department of Energy puts typical duct losses at roughly 20–30% of the air moving through the system. That's not a rounding error — it's a meaningful chunk of every heating and cooling dollar, leaking quietly, year after year.
A lot of the homes around Gordon County have ducts running through hot attics or damp crawlspaces, and plenty were built or retrofitted before duct sealing was taken seriously. Combine attic temperatures well over 120°F on a Calhoun July afternoon with river-valley humidity in the crawlspace, and a leaky duct system bleeds comfort and money in both seasons. It's one of the most common — and most overlooked — reasons a home "just won't keep up."
This is the heart of what makes Anderson a building-science company instead of a box-swapper. We don't guess at duct leakage — we measure it. A duct blaster is a calibrated fan that pressurizes your duct system so we can read exactly how much air is escaping. A blower door does the same for the whole house, measuring total air leakage. Most HVAC shops in this area own zero of these instruments. Anderson runs six duct blasters and six blower doors.
That means we can turn "my bill is high and I don't know why" into a real number, seal the leaks that actually matter, and then re-test to prove the home got better. It's the same instinct the company was founded on: customers kept telling John Anderson their new units were installed but the power bill was still sky-high, so he went past the equipment into the building science of the whole home. Sealing ducts is also one of the few fixes that can pay for itself over time and may qualify for energy rebates and weatherization programs.
We'll measure your duct leakage with a duct blaster, show you the number, seal what matters, and re-test to prove the improvement — no guessing, no oversized upsell.
Call (706) 629-0749Your ducts carry the air you paid to heat or cool. When they leak — at joints, boots, and connections, especially in an attic or crawlspace — that conditioned air escapes while unconditioned air gets pulled in. The system runs longer, your bill climbs, rooms stay uncomfortable, and the equipment wears faster. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates a typical home loses about 20–30% of the air moving through its ducts. The honest way to know your number is to measure it with a duct blaster.
Rooms that never reach the set temperature, a system that runs almost constantly, power bills that climb without an obvious reason, excessive dust, and uneven comfort between rooms. In Calhoun homes with ducts in hot attics or damp crawlspaces, leaks are very common — but the only way to know how bad they are is to measure. We use a duct blaster to put an actual leakage number on your system.
For most homes with measurable leakage, yes. More of the air you pay for reaches your rooms, the system runs less, comfort evens out, and equipment lasts longer. It's one of the few HVAC fixes that can pay for itself over time, and it may qualify for energy rebates and weatherization programs. The right approach is to measure first, seal what matters, then re-measure to prove it — which is how Anderson does it.
We use a duct blaster — a calibrated fan that pressurizes the ducts so we can measure exactly how much air is leaking — and a blower door for whole-house leakage. Most shops here own zero of these tools; Anderson runs six duct blasters and six blower doors. We turn a vague high-bill complaint into a real number, seal the leaks that matter, and re-test to prove the home improved.